Engineer versus Designer 16

[dextermech]

I'm 6 years out of college (BSME). During those 6 years, I was (and still am) titled a "Mechanical Engineer", but 99% of what I've done has been design work, NOT full blown engineering with lots of calculations, FEA, that sort of stuff. My worry is that if I change jobs, I will have nowhere near the skills and knowledge necessary to be hired as a "real" engineer. Certainly I am not the first person to have this happen to them. Any advice to give? Thanks! Very worried...

 

[MrMark77]

dextermech;

Being a designer is great particle experience that many engineers, the ones who have never seen nor touched a component that they have been hacking with the use of FEA’s can get. If you decide to go down the road of an “engineer” then you have all of your field experience to help you engineer and design something that you know will work once in the field. I know how you feel; I’ve been working in a division that deals with small projects, say less than $10 grand for the engineering with minimal calculations and a hole lot of field and particle experience. I am now working in a multi-discipline project office on large-scale projects where I am designing and engineering. I have found that my previous design work has helped my colleagues and me, even though it would only be a very small drop in the whole project scope. It was a big decision for me to make that move, I lost a lot of seniority in the company, but I believe this project work is the experience that I need if I wish to move on to other companies.

Cheers,
M.

 

[dextermech]

Here's what I'm worried about:

a. the company I work for is actually paying me too much to be doing practical design work and if they ever go belly-up, I will have to take a job making a lot les $$$

b. I will soon cap-out at my company as a practical designer and not have the skills to attain a higher paying job somewhere else as either a designer or an engineer.

I am 29 years old with 6 years of experience.

 

[MrMark77]

Dex;

By the sounds of it, you already know what you want to do.

Cheers,
M.

 

[dextermech]

I guess. I feel pretty confused actually. Not afraid to admit it either.

 

[floattuber]

dex, you sound a lot like me, same age and everything. The only difference is that I don't even have design experience as I was pretty much doing materials engineering for the past 6 years. I envy your position because you have the practical experience in ME, and I'm trying to get back into ME. Currently, I'm trying to get into a small company that will give me the practical experience and hopefully expand my ME skill set. With this company I too want to get into FEA as I really enjoyed stress analysis in school.

You're the only one who can make the decision, but for me I realized I needed to move on and see the rest of the engineering world.

 

[johnsmith2]

I have the similar experience right now. I have a Master in ME. Most of my job duties is detail designs work and a lot of engineering designs using Pro/E. I only use limited (linear material) simple FEA to proof my design. But, somehow, I found, compared with FEA analyst in other companies, I know so limited in the finite element analysis. My feeling is FEA analyst always paid high. While the detail drawings are something, "should be done by drafters". My company don't have any drafters, being design engineer, from design, FEA to testing, we need to do ourself. I would like to know, compared CAD with CAE, which one is more advanced?

 

[Beggar]

I am confused, too.

Dextermech, johnsmith, et. al.: Could you define "real" mechanical engineering for me?

You all seem very focused on FEA but from my perspective, FEA is just one small subset of activities that fall within the mechanical engineering arena. Johnsmith seems to take it even further and somehow discount linear FEA as being lesser engineering of sorts.

--------------------
How much do YOU owe?

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

--------------------

 

[floattuber]

Beggar, I supposed in my mind real engineering is a job position in which I will be able to use what I learned in school. I singled out FEA because that is an area I'd like to explore more of since I thought stress analysis was fun in school. However, it's not as if I consider FEA is the quintessential skill that defines mechanical engineering.

 

[GregLocock]

ftp://ftp.apesolutions.com/pub/Stress_Course_for_Liasion_Engineers.pdf

In my opinion anyone using FEA should be able to solve the problems in the above course both by hand and with FEA. They should also be able to explain the difference in results.

OK I'll admit I haven't done more than a few of them.



Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[dextermech]

OK I think I wrote my first post incorrectly. let's forget about the FEA. What I was trying to say is that I don't feel that what I am doing...no wait, I don't KNOW if what I am doing is considered "full blown" engineering. If I go somewhere else, MAYBE I will be left in the dust by the guys who have done heavier engineering than I have. I am NOT saying that design work is a menial task. I think that in the process of putting myself down in my first post I put others down too, hence some of the replies. The fact is that I don't know what I am in the eyes of the engineering/design world.

 

[wes616]

You assume that engineers all have the same experience. Let me assure you they do not. If you wish to stay in a product (machine) development roll, then your expriences up to this point will be equally as valid as someone who has had a 6 year career designing heat exchangers or someone who had had a 6 year career dealing with mfr issues. Each of us add to the value of a team.

As a matter of fact, the experiences you have make you a unique and interesting hire. Why the hell would i want to fill a room with a bunch of guys with the same skillset to solve my new new problem.

Personally i think your issue is not lack of skill, but it's lack of confidence.



Wes C.
------------------------------
No trees were killed in the sending of this message, but a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

 

[Beggar]

if what I am doing is considered "full blown" engineering

Let me try to be succint.

What you're doing *sounds* ilke "full-blown" design engineering.

It doesn't sound like "full-blown" HVAC or thermodynamic analytics or airframe analytics or what have you.

"Engineering" is a huge field and, in my experience, most people master and practice a very small subset of the skills introduced in an undergraduate ME curriculum.

--------------------
How much do YOU owe?

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

--------------------

 

[wes616]

"Engineering" is a huge field and, in my experience, most people master and practice a very small subset of the skills introduced in an undergraduate ME curriculum.

as with most professions. Would you want an ob-gyn performing your vasectomy?



Wes C.
------------------------------
No trees were killed in the sending of this message, but a large number of electrons were terribly inconvenienced.

 

[Beggar]

I was going to use a similar example, Wes, except that mine involved a proctologist so I decided to forego it altogether.

--------------------
How much do YOU owe?

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

--------------------

 

[IRstuff]

The bottom line is that if you change jobs, you probably WILL be left in the dust by others, that's the nature of the world, particularly if you're going to a different industry. Different practices, different design emphasis, etc. exist, without even getting into other nitty-gritty things like skill sets.

We have engineers that have been working for 10 yrs that will be left in the dust if they change to a different industry or even if they change projects, since their legacy experience before our merger was with different design practices in tolerancing and usage of datums. Rather trivial, but expensive, since we've had at least two projects with fubars because assumptions were made that allowed mounting points to be unspecified for flatness and parallelism. Since this was done by more than one engineer, it was a problem with the design practices manual from one organization, but each engineer in that organization was steeped in a poor design philosophy and now need to be re-oriented.

While others have unique skill sets and experiences, so do you. Whatever you're doing now, which might include more cradle-to-grave interactions give you certain advantages as well.

TTFN

 

[Heckler]

A Star for you Greg. I totally agree. One should be able to solve these types of problems without the use of software. Even the most complexed FEA problem can be broken down into parts and solved via hand calculations.


Best Regards,

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SW2005 SP 5.0 & Pro/E 2001
Dell Precision 370
P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
XP Pro SP2.0
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400
o
_`\(,_
(_)/ (_)

Never argue with an idiot. They'll bring you down to their level and beat you with experience every time.

 

[KENAT]

Dextermech,

I worked for about 5 years for a UK aerospace/defense company as a Design Engineer straight from University with a BEng in Aerospace Systems.

I covered a broad range of activities, from concept definition through detail design and drafting with CAD, project management, trials, tolerance analysis.... I actually used any of the more analytical skills, stress analysis, aerodynamics, thermal analysis etc, very little. Once I’d proved myself, I got some pretty generous pay increases and thought I was doing fairly well for my age/experience.

I had similar concerns to yours.

I moved to the US and though it took a while due to immigration, location and clearance issues I now have a job as a ‘CAD Engineer’ basically doing the same thing in a different industry for more money (given the change in location etc not as much more as the numbers would initially suggest but certainly more). The interesting thing is that a lot of the guys I work with are Designers/Drafters not Engineers and so I get volunteered occasionally to do more ‘Engineering’ type stuff such as simple stress calcs so have actually been doing more of this type of thing (I even bought a copy of Roarks!).

Hope this helps.

 

[dextermech]

Thanks for all the helpful replies guys. Yea...I *guess* that includes you too IR

I probably do lack confidence. Not to make excuses, but it's a little hard to have tons of confidence when you've only worked one place since college, and you just don't know what's out there lurking in the dark. Maybe I'm just paranoid.

 

[IRstuff]

Confidence comes with time and experience. Luckily for me, career move decisions were either very easy or forced upon me. In each case, I wound up in a totally different aspect of engineering.

One thing you, and only you, can decide is whether your current position, however ideal, is going to increase in scope. If not, then it may be necessary to shake things up. Talk to your manager. If there's no help there, then you may need change course, despite how good you maight have it. Stagnating in a golden cell is still stagnating.

BTW, just because you ARE paranoid, doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you. ;-)

TTFN

 

[johnsmith2]

Beggar and et al.,

The real mechanical engineering things should be

1) Analyzes engineering designs, schematics, and customer specifications to determine; stresses, strains temperatures, deflections and pressure requirements and limits on products.

2) Performs non-linear finite element analyses on components and assemblies using contact elements and plasticity.

3) Analyzes ability of product to withstand stresses imposed by conditions such as temperature, loads, motion, and vibration.

4) Performs fracture mechanics analyses to determine failure of components from cyclic fatigue crack growth and defines critical defect sizes.

These duties involve many engineering principal and calculations. Since I have the similar situation with dex, I would like to tell my story here.

I graduated with Master in ME and worked as research engineer in university for few years. My research background is the fracture behavior of the shape memory alloy and piezoelectric employing numerical methods. Since I know I am not the stuff for lecturer in university, I found a job in company four years ago, and work at Dallas as ball valve design engineer. Of course, in the beginning, I tried to find some positions, which is more related to my research background. However, I found either few companies work on this field or they have no openings. So, I found my current job in the traditional industry.

After working for few years, I found my duties only related to CAD design with Pro/E and Autocad, with few analysis. Of course, I know the CAD designer need draft experience in order to make a good design. But somewhat, I found what I am working is less theoretical and numerical. We can't use any FEA and CFD softwares, since my boss think it is not necessary, expensive and they assess the dimensions based on their working experience. My boss is near 60 old guy and I think he knows a little bit in FEA. This job really make me disappointed and I find myself as drafter, more than the "mechanical engineer". I don't have a PE too.

I am quite curious why some guys think FEA is only small subset of the engineering?

I have a graduate degree, I would like to work at the high-technology and cutting-edge industry with the good tools. I know MEMS might be my choice, but I have no direct experience.

Others mention a good point that "someone will be left in the dust if they change to a different industry or even if they change products to be designed" I agree with it, even though sometimes, the skills are transferable! This even makes me worried about current situations. I should keep my current position in this industry or jump to another industry which employs more engineering or calculations in their design world???